Top VARs 2021: Q&A with Probrand's Peter Robbins

The 87th-ranked Top VAR’s CEO on its bumper year

Not everyone in Top VARs saw growth in their latest years. How did Probrand buck the trend in your fiscal 2020, and how is 2021 shaping up?

We moved quickly to position as a trusted advisor, appearing on BBC Newsnight and iTV News at 10 in March, commentating on supply chain issues, which stood us in good stead. Customers gravitated to our ability to show live price and channel stock availability on over 300,000 products. We customised self-serve catalogues for specific customers and enabled at home delivery.

Whilst we saw a Covid bubble take us ahead of 2020 forecasts, 2021 has settled to where we forecast this year would be prior to Covid.

You claim your marketplace differentiates you from your peers. How important is it now to Proband's overall business?

Since the beginning of H2 2021 all multi-channel product and service transactions have been processed via our platform - this makes it fundamental to our business. Over 65 services can now be configured and combined within our proprietary Solutions Builder tool, which sits on the platform.

A lot of the vendors expect the current chip shortage to last well into 2022. What's your view?

We forecast ongoing global supply chain disruption, which includes chip constraints, will continue throughout 2022 and on into 2023. A mainstay of this is driven by raw material shortages coupled with the significant growth of IoT, 5G and smart devices. With so many products now requiring a CPU, the demand is far outstripping supply and quite simply, production cannot keep up.